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Document 52017IR6121

Opinion of the European Committee of the Regions — Mid-term review of the ESF preparing the post-2020 proposal

COR 2017/06121

OJ C 247, 13.7.2018, p. 11–15 (BG, ES, CS, DA, DE, ET, EL, EN, FR, HR, IT, LV, LT, HU, MT, NL, PL, PT, RO, SK, SL, FI, SV)

13.7.2018   

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

C 247/11

Opinion of the European Committee of the Regions — Mid-term review of the ESF preparing the post-2020 proposal

(2018/C 247/03)

Rapporteur:

Catiuscia Marini (IT/PES), President of the Umbria Region

POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

THE EUROPEAN COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS,

Cohesion policy

1.

 draws attention to the importance of regional cohesion policy as a founding policy of the European Union in that it pursues the aims of the EU as defined in the EU Treaties, involving and empowering all levels of government and taking into account specific subnational situations;

2.

 stresses that cohesion policy is among the most monitored and evaluated European policies, as can easily be seen from the many years of assessment and from the findings of the cohesion reports regularly produced by the European Commission and discussed in a number of forums;

3.

 draws attention to the widespread nature of this policy, causing it to be widely known by the European public, thereby contributing to a positive perception of Europe among the public, in a period of history in which the EU badly needs to improve its image;

4.

 considers a new legally binding Common Strategic Framework covering all EU policies, maintaining the existing multifund territorial delivery tools (CLLD and ITI), to be important; considers a robust Common Provisions Regulation covering all ESI funds to be equally important, being essential to ensure the necessary synergies between policies that pursue complementary objectives;

5.

 refers to its recent Opinion on the future of Cohesion Policy (1) (adopted in May 2017) and on simplification (2) (adopted in February 2018) which outlined the main guidelines for further improvement of the policy, especially in terms of a stronger results orientation and greater simplification;

6.

 is, however, aware of the poor representation of the results and impact of cohesion policy, which, in that it does not lead to proper promotion of this policy, at times has negative effects on public perception of the Structural Funds;

7.

 therefore calls for the development of a more effective, inclusive communications device that can create a positive, engaging narrative regarding the use of the funds.

Role of the European Social Fund

8.

 points out that the European Social Fund (ESF) was the first EU funding instrument created by the Treaty of Rome (1957), and remains the principal European Union instrument which directly benefits the public in relation to employment, social inclusion and education policies and plays a significant role in reforming public administrations and the judiciary; as such, the ESF promotes full employment, aims to improve work productivity and equal opportunities, promotes social inclusion, reduces the employment rate disparities between and within European regions and between the different cities and rural areas;

9.

 highlights the positive impact of the implementation of programmes financed by the ESF: it is estimated that between 2007 and 2014, thanks to ESF support, 9,4 million European citizens gained employment and 8,7 million gained a qualification (3);

10.

 regrets that many Member States have reduced the co-financing of ESF measures — often in part as a result of fiscal consolidation policies — and consequently urges the Member States to ensure an adequate level of national co-financing;

11.

 highlights, however, the role of ‘automatic stabiliser’ — which increased in the last years of the last programming period — played by the ESF in supporting the measures of the European Economic Recovery Plan during the economic crisis, when it proved to be sufficiently flexible through the increase of EU co-financing rates and the modulation of pre-financing in safeguarding social investment in regions suffering asymmetric economic shocks as well as in responding to challenges and supporting the most vulnerable and exposed groups;

12.

 calls for a closer relation between the proportion of socially excluded people and the allocation of resources; underlines that a more territorially targeted and a stronger place-based approach to the use of Funds would increase the efficiency and effectiveness of support;

13.

 also insists that the role of the ESF with regard to the overall share of public investment in social policies remains all the more essential as the minimum infrastructure gap in social infrastructure investment is estimated at EUR 100-150 billion per annum in the EU and represents a total gap of over EUR 1,5 trillion in 2018-2030. The European Fund for Strategic Investment (EFSI) is only compensating that gap in a very limited way as currently only 4 % of approved financing supports social infrastructure projects; underlines the need to strike a balance and avoid duplication between planned investments in social capital co-financed under the ESF and social, skills and human capital investment under a possible future InvestEU Fund;

14.

 welcomes the measures put in place in the 2014-2020 period to strengthen the role of the ESF – both active employment policies and social inclusion policies – such as the introduction of a minimum guaranteed ESF share, specific support for the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI), and the focus on results and performance;

15.

 stresses the encouraging results achieved thus far in the current programming period, as can be seen from the Strategic Report 2017: interventions to increase access to the labour market reaching 4,2 million unemployed and 2,1 million inactive individuals; EUR 14,6 billion of investments in education and vocational training; with 700 000 people having upgraded their skills; 634 000 people with disabilities have been helped to find a job;

16.

 notes the high European Added Value of the ESF in the previous and current programming periods, as ESF interventions had in many Member States and regions tangible and quantifiable impact in tackling issues such as high unemployment rates, demographic decline and poverty flagged as European priorities under the Europe 2020 Strategy;

17.

 notes the importance of the fact that a significant part of resources has been devoted to consolidation and capacity-building support for local and regional authorities in order to assist them in implementing structural reforms, inter alia, in keeping with the reform plan of each Member State;

18.

 is concerned, however, about the delays in implementing measures to further the integration of marginal and rural areas, calling for greater focus on promoting social inclusion in deprived urban and rural areas, particularly as regards the economic and social integration of young people.

The social dimension in European policies

19.

 considers the European Pillar of Social Rights to be important for the EU’s contribution to economic and social progress, fighting discrimination and social exclusion, helping people adjust to labour market needs, empowering them to harness the digital revolution, and protecting them from the ever-greater threats and uncertainties within and outside its borders;

20.

 reiterates the importance for border regions of promoting true cross-border labour mobility by removing barriers in labour law and social security (eradicating tax barriers, exporting unemployment benefits and making pension rights transferable); also reiterates that LRAs can also play an important role in the field of advice for commuters using the EURES services or existing cross-border structures (4);

21.

 therefore stresses the particular importance of the European Pillar of Social Rights, which places the social dimension at the heart of the European agenda; underlines to this effect the need to coordinate the strategies and objectives that should exist between the Social Pillar and the ESF (5) and urges that within the 20 key principles contained in the Pillar, those which are relevant should be reflected in the programmes supported by the ESF;

22.

 recommends that the principles of the social pillar be implemented in the context of ESF programming with due regard for the need to develop integrated measures that reflect specific subnational situations and medium-term EU job market trends, as expressed by local and regional authorities, and European Union employment prospects;

23.

 highlights the substantial areas of integration between the social pillar and cohesion policy, given that the latter — with its particular model of multi-level governance — can reconcile the delivery of ‘European format’ projects with the ‘social contracts’ typical of each Member State;

24.

 considers it necessary to accompany the debate on the social pillar with an initial assessment at European level of the process and implementation outcomes of Thematic Objective 9 (Social inclusion and combating poverty) seen in relation to the different Member States’ welfare models and the crises/changes they are going through, as it would be difficult to understand the objective’s contribution to the pillar without referring to the situation on the ground.

25.

 warns against possible duplications between a future Structural Reform Programme and potential areas of support to structural reforms addressed by European Structural and Investment Funds through thematic concentration based currently on Europe 2020 Strategy objectives and a later stage on its successor strategy. To this effect, calls for a definition of the scope of structural reforms eligible to EU support on the basis of competences and EU added value as well as a clear-cut distinction between support eligible on the basis of cohesion policy (Article 175) and support eligible on the basis of administrative cooperation (Article 197);

Post-2020 recommendations

26.

 calls for the process of defining the proposal for the next MFF (Multiannual Financial Framework) to be launched in due time to allow citizens and key stakeholders to be sufficiently involved, thus avoiding the delays in the adoption of the regulations and guidelines which have delayed the start of the current programming period;

27.

 building on the CoR study on the ‘State of play and future challenges of the European Social Fund in promoting social cohesion in Europe’s cities and regions’, points to the growing role that the ESF is called to play in the coming years, with particular reference to the challenges of long-term unemployment, integrating young people into the labour market, an ageing population and marginalisation of internal outlying and border areas, depopulation of rural areas, demographic changes as a result of migration, integrating refugees and migrants, combating social exclusion in urban areas, certain skills shortages and adapting general, vocational and higher education to technological progress, combating social exclusion of disadvantaged groups, support for education from pre-schoolers to seniors, and support for adults with low levels of knowledge and skills as well as adapting education standards to the needs of the EU job market;

28.

 insists on the complementarity between the EGF and the ESF as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) since the EGF is a mechanism that delivers short-term assistance while long-term measures are supported by ESIF which can act as follow-up measures in the EGF areas;

29.

 stresses the unprecedented scale of the current digital revolution and the powerfully effect it is having on the labour market and will have to an even greater extent in the future, pointing out the challenges this poses for the education and training systems in terms of adapting to new skills requirements and increasing learning opportunities for all individuals at every level of general and vocational education and in higher education and training;

30.

 proposes that, in future, a set of core measures be identified as part of the ESF, in order to ensure that disadvantaged young people have access to a minimum level of education and are provided with the means necessary to acquire an adequate level of skills;

31.

 considers it extremely important to ensure the necessary flexibility to be able to adapt ESF programming to any new challenges that might arise;

32.

 stresses the need to support this digital revolution by fostering integration between investments in digital technology on the one hand and support for individuals on the other, including those operating in local and regional public organisations;

33.

 therefore considers that for the challenges posed by the need to adapt to technological change and globalisation to be addressed successfully, a joined-up combination of the different European incentive and support instruments is needed, applied in a mutually reinforcing way in pursuit of the objectives defined in the respective smart specialisation strategies;

34.

 firmly believes that in order to tackle these challenges the ESF should remain an integral part of the ESIF and a key element of regional cohesion policy, to harness every possible synergy in terms of integration with measures financed by the other Structural Funds and the rural development funds; the ESF must effectively interact with other Structural Funds, particularly the ERDF, in order to achieve regional policy which is integrated through joint Structural Funds measures;

35.

 also firmly believes that the possibility of the ESF to be a shared managed fund must be preserved and therefore strongly rejects any proposal to link the ESF to a model of direct management by the European Commission, and also rejects any possibility of centralisation under the sole responsibility of Member States, unless this is stipulated by the institutional arrangements of the Member State;

36.

 believes that a key success factor in the delivery of the ESF is its bottom-up approach, which makes it possible to better adapt interventions to the needs of beneficiaries by means of partnerships between European institutions, Member States, regional and local governments and the area’s economic and social players;

37.

 calls for specific mechanisms to be introduced, at local and regional levels, for coordination between the ESF and other ESIF and instruments. These should enable complementarities at the level of operations, including possibilities for support from multiple funding sources within one operation;

38.

 approves of the scenarios whereby other funds operating in the social and employment policy field are integrated into the ESF (ESF+ or umbrella fund), provided that this leads to the achievement of clear synergies and that these funds also follow the shared management model. These synergies would be particularly obvious with the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund (AMIF), which operates in a shared management scheme;

39.

 points out that the ESF will continue to be important at local and regional level in tackling the issue of early school-leaving and the transition from school to work, and in improving the education system’s ability to address these problems;

40.

 suggests that adapting the ESF at regional level could ensure that the skills needs of businesses in different regions are met, by means of appropriate training and matching of jobseekers and employers. The ESF is essential for measures to ensure the supply of the right skills at regional level and for enabling adaptation within certain sectors, such as those facing major challenges due to digitalisation;

41.

 at the same time, expresses concern that the creation of the umbrella ESF might lead to an overall reduction in the resources devoted to employment and social inclusion, and weaken the role of local and regional authorities in the programming and management of these funds;

42.

 agrees that there is a need to give the ESF greater visibility in the MFF, and advocates — within the cohesion policy heading — the creation of individual subheadings for economic, territorial and social cohesion respectively, calling, in general, for a more transparent MFF structure, to make it easier for the European citizens to see what the EU’s priorities are;

43.

 regrets that the recent European Commission’s Communication on ‘A new, modern Multiannual Financial Framework for a European Union that delivers efficiently on its priorities post-2020’ (6) omits the information on how the next MFF should tackle the social challenges for the European Union and leaves little margin for stakeholders to shape the European Commission’s proposal for the next MFF, due to be presented on 2 May 2018;

44.

 reiterates that pursuing the economic development and social inclusion objectives requires a joined up, organic approach that can be better achieved by implementing programmes financed by several funds or by one fund with a wide and flexible scope. Therefore, the CoR acknowledges the importance of multifund territorial development instruments such as multifund operational programmes, ITIs and CLLD, rejecting all attempts to introduce a requirement for single fund programmes;

45.

 calls, therefore, for further harmonisation — as well as streamlining — of the Common Provisions Regulation, so that the disparities, gaps and duplications between the funds’ operating rules are minimised and so that rules are defined in a simple, transparent way, leaving sufficient flexibility for tailored solutions to be developed at national, regional and local level, including an extension of ‘payment by result’ tools as well as Joint Action Plans and Simplified Costs Options; calls, in this regard, for further guidance from the European Commission on the use of Simplified Costs Options at all levels, without any restrictions or requirements on their minimum thresholds;

46.

 stresses the key role played by the ESF in responding to the employment, education and social inclusion guidance set out in the Country Specific Recommendations, calling for better alignment of a reformed European Semester and cohesion policy. The European Semester should indeed be further democratised at European and national level, better defined in terms of European added value and relation with EU competences and also be more focused on ownership, to which could contribute the adoption of a Code of Conduct setting standards for the involvement of local and regional authorities as well as the setting up of a ‘structural dialogue on the state of cohesion in Europe’ to be incorporated into the European Semester process;

47.

 is therefore opposed to merely making cohesion policy subordinate to the European Semester, which would undermine its status enshrined in the Treaties, calling rather for structured involvement of local and regional authorities as partners in the European Semester process, the integration of a territorial analysis into the whole process, and the introduction of territorial specific recommendations when possible;

48.

 proposes that, in keeping with the opinions adopted by the CoR on Indicators for territorial development — GDP and beyond and on The future of cohesion policy beyond 2020, the use of indicators other than GDP which take account of demographic, social and environmental data, such as the European Social Progress Index, also be considered.

Brussels, 22 March 2018.

The President of the European Committee of the Regions

Karl-Heinz LAMBERTZ

(1)  COR 1814/2016.

(2)  COR 4842/2017.

(3)  Commission Staff Working Document on the Ex-post evaluation of the 2007-2013 ESF Programmes (SWD(2016) 452 final).

(4)  COR 1319/2014.

(5)  COR-03141/2017.

(6)  COM(2018) 98 final, published on 14 February 2018.

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